Man faces prison term following bomb threat

BALLSTON SPA >> A Glenville man faces up to 1-1/3 years in state prison for allegedly making a bomb threat that forced GlobalFoundries to evacuate 3,000 construction workers from its Fab 8 site on Monday.

Robert Thomas, 25, remains in Saratoga County Jail, awaiting court-ordered psychological evaluations to determine his capacity for understanding the charges against him.

It’s still unclear why Thomas, an electrician’s apprentice, allegedly wrote a threatening note, which he then reported to company officials.

“Motive is still one of the things state police are trying to determine,” Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III said Tuesday. “They’re talking to co-workers and family members.”

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Manufacturing at the huge computer chip plant was never interrupted, and those 2,000 workers were not affected by the incident.

Two separate construction projects are currently underway at GlobalFoundries, which is on the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta.

Thomas worked for Ballston Spa-based Turner Construction Co. that is building a $1.4 billion, 90,000 square foot expansion to Fab 8, the manufacturing facility.

The M+W Group is building a $2 billion research facility, adjacent to Fab 8, called the Technology Development Center. Work on that project began in early 2013 and is on track for completion by the end of 2014.

The two projects together employ 3,000 construction workers. All such workers were sent home Monday, but returned to work early Tuesday morning, said Rebecca Milligan, a GlobalFoundries spokesperson.

Thomas is in jail on $5,000 bail or $10,000 bond.

He has been ordered to undergo two separate psychological evaluations from two different psychiatrists, who will independently making their findings known to the court, Murphy’s office and Thomas’s attorney, Murphy said.

Murphy said he hasn’t seen Thomas’s file yet.

State police, in Malta, charged Thomas with second-degree falsely reporting an incident, a felony. If convicted, he could get a maximum sentence of 1 to 1-1/3 years in prison or a minimum punishment of probation.

State police say Thomas allegedly placed the threatening note in a bathroom, then “discovered” and reported it to company officials. A check of security cameras revealed that no one else but Thomas had been in that specific area, police said.

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